Integrating comprehensive literacy instruction

All AAC users, regardless of diagnosis and perceived severity of learning challenges, should be receiving comprehensive literacy instruction.

It’s not possible to cover all the details of implementing a comprehensive literacy program in a single article, but there are some fantastic resources and ideas that can help you get started on the journey to full literacy for AAC users.

We acknowledge the work of Karen Erikkson, David Koppenhaver, Jane Farrall and many others, who are making great changes in the way we think about and teach literacy to AAC users.

Emergent vs Conventional Literacy

From the time that children are born, they’re on their literacy journey. Emergent literacy is how readers relate to books and writing before they learn about letters and words and start relating to books in a conventional way. Emergent readers may chew on books, hold them the wrong way up, flip pages. Emergent writers may scribble or pound on a keyboard. These initial signs of interest in books and text are the foundation of conventional literacy, where the knowledge of letters, words, and reading continuous text is learned.

How you approach teaching literacy to your AAC user depends on whether they are at the emergent or conventional literacy. While this can be hard to assess, Erickson & Koppenhaver (2013) recommend this rubrick:

We’ll give a brief summary of each of the teaching techniques listed in the figure above. For more detail, see Jane Farrall’s blog post, as well as the resources at the end of this article.

1. Shared Reading (Emergent)

Shared Reading is used to introduce emergent readers to reading. In shared reading, the focus is on interaction, as we model language, conversation, and how books “work”. In the process, we help AAC users learn how to engage with books in an enjoyable and more conventional way.

Picture walk: talk about the pictures before reading the text. Make guesses about what the story is about, who the characters are, etc.

Always read for a purpose. It could be something as simple as “choose your favorite page” for beginning conventional readers to making predictions or inferences about the stories.

Read the same story multiple times, for a different purpose each time.

Find interesting words in the text - what does the word mean? what are some different words that mean the same thing? What is the first sound, the last sound?

After reading the text use sticky labels to cover particular words e.g. core words/ describing words/ verbs. Work with students to figure out the missing words.

Find Tar Heel readers to share with the class, print/share on iPads/interactive whiteboard.

Predictive or inferential questions that can be discussed with each repeated reading include:

What will happen if ____?

What will happen next?

What happened before the story?

How did the characters feel?

What do the characters think?

What other things could the character say?

Why will ____ happen?

Why wouldn’t ___ happen?

How do you think ____ happened?

How did that happen?

Think of a different way the story could end

3. Independent Reading (Emergent and Conventional)

All literacy learners need time to select their own books and read independently. For some learners, this may mean flipping through a book to look at the pictures. For others, it may be books on computer or in an iPad app. Learners should have a wide range of books to choose from, and should be allowed to pick their own reading material.

4. Shared Writing (Emergent)

Shared writing is a scaffolded group activity for emergent writers, where we can select the structure of what will be written and then we “think aloud” to model the writing process. Each AAC user contributes a line, using their AAC system.

5. Independent Writing (Emergent and Conventional)

All AAC users should have frequent opportunities every day to write using the alphabet for real purposes. This means not just tracing letters or practicing writing their name on a worksheet, but writing to accomplish a real purpose. Some examples may include: signing into a activity, writing a story, a letter, a poem, a schedule, rewriting or adding to a favorite book. Most students who use AAC have difficulty forming letters with a pencil, and will need some form of alternative pencil to access the alphabet. This can be a keyboard page that is part of their AAC system, or some other alphabet display. For more information on different alternative keyboards visit the instructional resources section of the DLM website.

Another important strategy for beginning writers, is to give informative feedback for AAC users who are not yet conventional spellers. First, we set the topic for the writing assignment. Let the AAC user access his or her alternative pencil to write about the topic. Then give informative feedback to help the AAC user make connections between the letters he has chosen and the content of the picture. See this video for more information about informative feedback.

In addition to writing with the alphabet, AAC users also need experience writing using the vocabulary in their AAC system. This can allow AAC learners to work on higher-level literacy and language skills such as syntax and verb tenses and using language for communication. Not all writing needs to be done with the alphabet.

6. Letter and Sound Awareness

All AAC users benefit from increasing their knowledge of letters and letter sounds. Emergent learners need to develop their knowledge of individual letter names and sounds, and conventional learners need to develop knowledge of syllables, separating words into sounds, and onset and rime.

Take key words from the text/activity and make up as many rhyming words as possible

Build literacy skills

Developing literacy skills is crucial for all learners. AAC users, given time, the right tools and teaching strategies, can also acquire these essential literacy skills. It is important that comprehensive literacy instruction is integrated alongside AAC learning. Together these will build language for the AAC user, to give them powerful and independent communication.

You might also like

Finding the right words to say can be a challenge, but typing doesn’t have to be. This accessible keyboard is designed to make typing in almost any iOS app easier and faster for people with physical and vision impairments.

It's the first day of school and a new student enters the classroom. Valeria is 12, uses an AAC device and is bilingual! Use this list of resources to make sure Valeria gets the most out of her bilingual advantage.